Feather Stitch Hem
by Tiamat's Child
Summary: Himawari takes up fancy work. Spoilers for her backstory.


**Title: **Feather Stitch Hem  
**Author: **Tiamat's Child  
**Rating:** PG  
**Fandom:** XXXHolic  
**Character/s:** Himawari, Watanuki, Doumeki  
**Disclaimer:** Not mine.  
**Summary:** Himawari takes up fancy work.

**Feather Stitch Hem**

If she could, Himawari would stitch protection into the apron she was sewing, her smile smaller and firmer than usual with concentration, catching the thread and keeping her touch light so that the hem would look as if it were held together by feathers the same bright yellow as Tampopo's. If she could, she would use thread and needle and love to bind safety and hope and peace into the hem, into the seams, into the (inexpert) fancy work. If she could.

But Himawari knew she was doing no such thing. The only thing work from her hands could bring was sorrow and pain and probable death. She knew that. She remembered the gifts she'd given as a child, formed with patience and impetuous joy from clay or construction paper and glitter and glue, and the arson, depression, cancer, kitchen accidents, and structural collapse that had gone with them. She'd given a boy she was fond of a valentine she'd made herself in the first grade, before she'd realized what a truly bad idea that was. He'd fallen from the swings the next day.

She was glad that, eventually, he woke up again.

Himawari had not made anything for anyone else in years. Even with her parents it was risky. They might give it away, or lend it, and it seemed that the connection was stronger with things she'd made herself, which meant that the luck was worse, which meant that she might kill a total stranger with nothing more than a handkerchief hem.

There was no safe place to stand around Himawari, but the closer you were, the more dangerous it was.

She hummed to herself, trying to rein the featherstitch back in. It was hard to keep it from turning into a simple chain stitch. It was hard and her heart was full, her heart was in her throat, no it was higher than that, she held her heart in her mouth and she stitched and thought of Watanuki's smile when she gave him the apron.

A gift from her hands could kill him and he knew and still, he wanted it. She'd troubled his heart, and he knew it. A touch from her had sent him tumbling two stories to the pavement in a hail of glass and blood, and still he reached out to her. She had told him that yes, it was true, loving her destroyed people. The more you felt, the more vulnerable you were, the more likely to trip some day, and fall into traffic, or suddenly, one morning, find the ground you stood on crumbling around you, or discover that the world was too much, that there was more work and more sorrow than you could bear, and under the weight you yourself would crumble, even as the ground beneath you stayed solid.

"Even so, it makes me happy to know you," he'd said, and she had felt as if she had stepped off of the ground and onto the air and somehow, somehow, somehow, the air was solid, she could stand on it, she did not have to come back down.

"I'm so glad to see you!" he said, every morning, every afternoon, every time they meet, and he deserved better than this apron, which would probably cause him to scald himself, to scrape his knuckles on graters and drop heavy pickle jars on his feet, but this was what he had asked for, something from Himawari's hands, and Himawari was too selfish to deny him what he wanted. She had nothing left in her that could say 'no' to him. Not anymore. Not when, knowing everything, his eyes open and clear, he asked, and Himawari knew, oh Himawari knew, that he meant each request with all of his dear soul.

The hem would be featherstitch when she was done. The first time she would tie the sash herself, and her hands would be sure and even, and Doumeki would say exactly the right thing to send Watanuki into a hissing, blustering fit before he could do more than stare at her, his look so soft and full and brave that she would know that the only thing left for her was to love him while he lived.


End file.
